How the Internet Improves People's Lives

Overview

There are no doubt in people’s minds that the Internet has made a significant difference in improving the lives of many people.  With the Internet, people today:

• Can find information with the ease of just a few mouse clicks
• Work from home
• Communicate and share with others
• Have better means of expressing their ideas and creativity
• Have more sources of entertainment
• Generate residual income

Easy Access to Information

With a computer, Internet access, and an Internet browser, anyone can find almost any information about anything from the comfort of their home!

Before the Internet, people used actual hard copy prints in the library, like the Britannica Encyclopedia or magazine issues to do research.  Today, much of the traditional information is available online.  Britannica Encyclopedia is now available online.  Also look at wikipedia.org.  Information there is published in 10 different languages.  The English section alone holds almost 3 million articles!  What library on the planet has that kind of capacity!  News articles are no longer limited to hard copy because newspapers now publish online.  Take a look at Mercury News (a San Jose, California, newspaper publisher).  The same is true for the New York Times!

These are just but a small sample from the vast information sources of the Internet.  Because the Internet is such a mainstream source of information, people may take it for granted.  However, it is “the” biggest improvement to people’s lives, whether they realize it or not.

Work Anywhere

The Internet is allowing people to work anywhere now.  One doesn’t have to be sitting in front of their office desk to work.  Through the Internet people can work at home, at a café, the beach, or anywhere.

Through the Internet, people can connect to their office network through a VPN (virtual private network) or various Internet capable applications.  Remote computer access and e-mail are two main applications used today to allow one to work remotely.  At home, all that one needs is a desktop computer, Internet access, and a area at home they can call their home office.

With the availability of laptops today, anyone can work at a café.  Retail stores like Barnes and Noble and Borders provide Internet “hotspots” where people can connect to that Internet.  The biggest coffee shop—Starbucks—is also generally an Internet hotspot.  Thus, one can be at a café and still work.  How convenient is that!

Hotels today also provide Internet access, and most of them today provide it for free.  Some people today bring their laptop along on their vacation.  Some even take it to the beach to check email and catch up on some work.

With the widespread use of smart phones or PDA (personal digital assistant) with data service (and thus access to the Internet), anyone can check email and even read documents.  This means they can work almost anywhere—while walking, lying on their bed, or even sitting in the bathroom!

Through the Internet, work no longer has any physical geographical boundaries.

Communicate with Others

Aside from work related communications, the Internet allows people to have almost instant communications with their friends and families.

Before the Internet, people used phones to keep in touch with family and friends during their waking hours.  There may be friends or acquaintances out there they may have lost touch with, but have never thought about reaching.  In some cases, people wrote mail and sent it using the US Postal Service.  The letter would take days to reach its recipient, and the response would take as long.

Today, communication is instant--using email or Internet chat applications.  Almost everyone has an email address, and sending them email can be done at any time of the day.  The response can be read at any time of the day as well.  If people want instant communication, they can use Internet chat, where messages and their responses are sent and received in real time.  One doesn’t even need a phone to call someone.  Ever heard of Skype?  With Skype, one can use the Internet to make an online phone call.

Not only is communication improved by the capabilities now available on the Internet, the ability of sharing pictures has been improved through services like Flickr and other similar online sharing services.  No longer does one have to mail pictures to grandma; now all one has to do is email a link and everyone can see!

Aside from communicating with relatives and close friends, finding long lost friends has become extremely easy as well.  With the rise and widespread use of social networking services like MySpace and FaceBook, people can easily find long lost friends through their network and their friends and relatives’ network.  Communication in these social networks is done through one’s social pages—much like email, but the messages are shared to a degree which is user controlled.

Most recently, the search engine giant of the Internet, Google.com, has announced the release of Google Wave—a revolutionary Internet communication tool.  It may just be the next step in online communication.

The Internet is a force that continues to help improve communications between people.

Improved Expression of Ideas

The Television was probably one of the most influential means of expressing ideas of its time.  Today, it is quickly being overrun by various Internet applications—blogging, video publishing, online broadcasting, and even online TV!

With the Internet anyone can express their ideas through web logging—or blogging for short.  Free blogging services are available through the likes of wordpress.com, blogger, and many other possible choices.  For those who wish to have their own domain name, all it takes is the purchase of a domain name, a web hosting service, and the installation of some blogging software like Word Press.  Once setup, anyone can publish their idea and it becomes instantly available for the world to see!

Traditionally, only big TV companies like ABC, NBC, and CBS were capable of reaching the masses.  Today, anyone can reach the masses with TV-like media using the Internet through web applications like those available at YouTube, UStream, and many others.

One doesn’t have to spend years in theater or acting school to publish a video online.  With YouTube and a video recording-capable camera, anyone can be the writer, actor, director, and publisher.  All that one has to do is create an account (or channel) on YouTube and upload the video, and viola, the video is online and available to the world.

For those that just want to do live video broadcasting, UStream.tv is one way to go.  All one needs is a laptop, a webcam, and high-speed internet access and one can be broadcasting to the world in minutes.  Using traditional broadcasting techniques, all this used to take some real estate, massive transmission antennae, and a TV network!

The Internet has leveled the broadcasting playing field that practically anyone can broadcast their idea to the world.  Without the Internet, this would not have been possible.

More Sources of Entertainment

In the past, people used the radio or the TV as their main source of entertainment.  In some cases they would go to a movie theater.  Today, all those and many more are available through the power of the Internet.

No longer is anyone limited to the reaches of a radio station’s transmitter; anyone can listen to almost any radio station regardless of its location.  The same goes for TV.  More and more stations now are publishing their TV episodes online (e.g. cwtv.com).  This means that one is no longer tied to a TV channel’s broadcasting schedule.  One can watch an episode at any time of the day!

Aside from the traditional radio and TV entertainment now available online, old TV episodes and movies are now available online too.  Check Hulu.com, for example.  This site makes available old and some relatively new movies and TV shows.

The Internet has also given rise to alternative entertainment.  The ability of people to express themselves easily online now gives others more choices for entertainment.  Look at the various channels on YouTube.com and UStream.tv and see some interesting entertainment that would not have been possible without the Internet.

Entertainment isn’t limited to video.  Various portals like Yahoo.com, MSN.com, and Google.com, provide the latest buzz on entertainers, various other gossips, and latest news.

Without the Internet, people’s entertainment options would be limited to TV, radio, and the theaters.  Today, all that has been blown away with the alternatives as vast as the Internet itself.

Residual Income

Long time ago, only movie, TV, music, and book royalties were the main sources of residual income.  Today the Internet has a new alternative, thanks to the people who revolutionized online advertisement—google.com.

As most people know, anyone can put up an online ad through google.com.  But not many people know that one can earn money through Google ads and various other similar programs.

By providing web real estate where Google ads (or an affiliate) can be displayed, someone with a web site with several thousands of hits a day can potentially earn money.  There are other similar programs—called affiliate programs—one can join.  By placing ads on a web site, one is able to monetize their web site and thus earn income.

Because of Internet ads, it is now also possible to earn income by writing online content for sites like helium.com, ehow.com, hubpages.com, squidoo.com, bukisa.com, and xomba.com.  Bukisa.com even has a sort of multilevel type of referral income generation.  For example, clicking this link would take you to the author’s bukisa referral link, and thus adding you to his bukisa network.

Other ad-related income generation schemes have also evolved out of Internet ads.  The sudden success of twitter.com has allowed companies like tweetbucks.com to gain from the twitter.com’s success by providing a service for shortening URL links.  Remember, twitter posts are limited to 140 characters, thus if one was posting a long URL, that 140 character limit would be hit immediately.  Tweetbucks.com helps address this limitation.  So when one has completed an article online and wants others to know of it, they can post a twitter message using the shortened URL provided by Tweebucks.com.  If you go to the author’s twitter page, you will see how this is being applied.  Clicks on the shortened URLs can potentially earn one dollars if one has many followers.

These and many other income generation alternatives would not have been possible without the Internet.  Residual incomes from these alternatives have made it possible for stay-at-home moms to continue staying home, and many others to gain additional income, especially in today’s economic climate.

Conclusion

The Internet has definitely made significant contributions to the improvement of people’s lives.  Through the Internet people can find information they would otherwise not have access to, work from home, communicate with family and others, express their ideas and creativity, find more sources of entertainment, and generate residual income.

Today, it is hard to imagine what life would be without the benefits the Internet.